Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

'You've read about Matthew Corbett, haven't you, Bonehead? If it wasn't for him, we couldn't walk the streets safe at night, could we? Couldn't even go out for a drink and a poke. Well, Polly talks about him all the time,' said Baiter, with an edge of harshness creeping in. 'About what a gentleman he is. How smart, and how noble. As if the rest of us men were just little creatures to be tolerated. Little useless creatures, but oh how that whore can go on about him!'

'I think the whole damned thing was made up, is what I think!' said the blowsy lady, whose sausage-skin was a gown thirty pounds ago. 'Ain't nobody could live, fightin' fifty men! Ain't that what I think, George?' When there was no reply, she kicked the chair of one of the unconscious patrons and he answered with a muffled groan.

'Fifty men!' Dippen Nack lifted his head again. The sweat of effort sparkled on his ruddy, cherub-cheeked face. The constable was, in Matthew's opinion, though, closer to a devil than a cherub. Anybody who stole the gaol keys and went in at night to pee on the prisoners did not rate high in his book of life. 'A damned lie! And me, boppin' that Evans bastard on the bopper and savin' Corbett's life, and not even gettin' my name in that rag! Takin' a knife in the arm for my trouble, too! It ain't fair!' Nack made a strangled sound, as if he were about to start crying.

'Sure he's a liar, Sam,' said Bonehead, with a small sip from his own mug, 'but that's a fine suit he's wearin'. Fittin', for such a smart cock to strut around in. How much that suit cost you?' This was spoken as Bonehead stared into the depths of his drink.

Now Matthew began to suspect why Greathouse had brought him here. Of all places, to the tavern where he knew two men had died in brutal fights right on this floor, which looked to him to be more blood-stained than brandy-splashed. Having clerked for Magistrate Nathaniel Powers, Matthew also knew that Lionel Skelly himself was no stranger to violence; the tavern keeper had cut off a man's hand with an axe he kept behind the bar. It didn't pay to try to swipe coins from the cashbox in here.

Greathouse spoke up, to parry the question: 'Way too much, in my opinion.'

There was a silence.

Bonehead Boskins slowly put his mug on the bar and aimed his eyes at Greathouse. Now he looked every inch a man who was neither too drunk nor too stupid but perhaps just enough of both to light his wick. In fact, he looked supremely confident in his ability to maim. Indeed, eager. 'I was speakin' to the young hero,' he said. 'Not to you, old man.'

Yep, Matthew thought as his heartbeat quickened and his guts went squirmy. Sure as rain. The crazed maniac had brought them here to get into a fight. It wasn't enough that Matthew had been doing very well in his arduous lessons on swordplay, map-making, preparing and firing a flintlock pistol, horsemanship and other such necessities of the trade. No, he wasn't progressing fast enough in that 'fist combat' nonsense that Greathouse imposed upon him. Remember, Greathouse had said many times, you fight with your mind before you use your muscles.

It seemed that Matthew was about to get a demonstration of the great one's mind. And Heaven help us, he thought.

Greathouse stood up. He was still smiling, though the smile had thinned.

Matthew again counted the heads. The fiddler had stopped his fiddling. Was he a fighter, or a fixture? George and his unconscious companion were still face-down, but they might come to life at the first smack. Who could say what Dippen Nack would do? The blowsy lady was grinning; her front teeth had already been knocked out. Baiter would probably wait for Bonehead to bash a skull before he started nose-chewing. Skelly's axe was always near at hand. Of the five others, two looked like rough-edged wharfmen who craved a good bustarole. The remaining three, at a back table, were dressed in nice suits that they might not want to disfigure and were puffing on churchwarden pipes, though certainly they were no reverends. A throw of the dice, Matthew thought, but he really hoped Greathouse was not such a careless gamesman.

Instead of advancing on Bonehead, Greathouse casually removed his cap and cloak and hung them on wallpegs. 'We just came in to spend a little time. As I said, we're expecting someone. Neither Mr. Corbett nor I want any trouble.'

Expecting someone? Matthew had no idea what the man was talking about.

'Who're you expectin'?' Bonehead leaned against the bar and crossed his thick arms. A seam at the shoulder was threatening to burst. 'Your lady friend, Lord Cornhole?' Beside him, Baiter sniggered.

'No,' Greathouse replied, 'we're expecting a man I might hire to join our agency. I thought this would be an interesting place to meet.' At that moment, the door opened, Matthew saw a shadow on the threshold, heard the clump of boots, and Greathouse said, 'Here he is now!'

Zed the slave walked in, wearing a black suit, white stockings and a white silk cravat.

As the place went quiet except for an inrush of breath and Matthew's eyes bulged in their sockets, Matthew looked at Greathouse with an effort that almost broke his neck and managed to say, 'Have you gone mad?'

Two

Mad or not, Greathouse had a gleam in his eye and a measure of pride in his voice when he next addressed the slave: 'Well! Don't you look upright!'

How much of this praise Zed understood was unknown. The slave stood with his back against the door, his wide shoulders slightly bowed as if he feared disturbing the tavern's precarious peace. His black, fathomless eyes moved from Greathouse to take in the other patrons and then back again, in what was almost to Matthew's viewpoint a gaze of supplication. Zed didn't want to be here, no more than he was wanted.

'That's the coroner's crow!' came a shrill cry from the lady. 'I seen him carryin' a dead man easy as a sack a' feathers!'

This was no exaggeration. Zed's tasks in service to Ashton McCaggers included the cartage of bodies from the streets. Matthew had also witnessed the slave's formidable feats of strength, down in the cold room in City Hall's cellar.

Zed was bald and massive, nearly the same height as Hudson Greathouse but broader across the back, shoulders and chest. To look upon him was to view in its full and mysterious force all the power of the dark continent, and so black was he that his flesh seemed to radiate a blue glow under the yellow lamps. Upon his face- cheeks, forehead and chin-were tribal scars that lay upraised on the skin, and in these were the stylized Z, E, and D by which McCaggers had named him. McCaggers had evidently taught him some rudimentary English to perform his job but, alas, could not teach him to speak, for Zed's tongue had been severed from its root long before the slaveship made fast to the Great Dock.

Speaking of tongues, Skelly found his. It threw forth a croaking blast from Hell: 'Get that crow out of here!'

'It's against the law!' shouted Baiter, just as soon as Skelly's voice finished shaking sawdust from the rafters. His face, mottled with crimson, wore the rage of insult. 'Get him out or we'll throw him out! Won't we, Bonehead?'

'Law? 'Gainst what law? I'm a constable, by God!' Nack had begun to stir himself once more, but in his condition stirring was a far stretch from standing.

Bonehead had not responded to the threat his companion had just unsheathed; it appeared to Matthew that Bonehead was taking in the size of the new arrival, and Bonehead was not so thick-skulled as to wish to batter himself against that particular ram. Still, being as men are men and men who drink potent liquor become more mettlesome as the mug is drained, Bonehead took a slug of valor and said, though nearly speaking into his drink, 'Damn right.'

'Oh, gentlemen, let's not go down that path!' Greathouse offered his palms to the bar, affording Matthew a view of the small scars and knots on the man's well-used knuckles. 'And surely, sir,' he said, addressing Baiter, 'you don't really respect any decree Lord Cornbury might have pulled from under his gown, do you?'

'I said,' came the tavern-keeper's voice, now not so much a croak as the metallic